There’s a vague otherworldliness to the animals and landscapes in artist Simen Johan’s “Until the Kingdom Comes” series, currently on display at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York. In one photograph a dense fog descends on a family of giraffes, their necks all but disappearing into the clouds. In another, small monkeys feast on pomegranates, the idyllic setting backlit by hazy sunlight. Yet these vignettes are not candid nature shots; almost all of Johan’s prints are digitally constructed, seamless collages of various photographs that are then stitched together to create fantastical images of animals in unexpected environments.

Untitled #176, 2012.

The result is an overwhelming sense of the uncanny, as viewers struggle to differentiate between the authentic and the artificial. This is most acutely felt in Johan’s depiction of Peruvian yellow-hooded blackbirds inhabiting a tar pit in an Icelandic volcano. The work takes on a eerie tone, and even the pops of bright color seem ominous against the gloomy landscape.